Jan 18 2025
Danny Kaye could turn language into percussion. A list of Russian composers became a showstopper. A nonsensical string of syllables could accelerate until words seemed to lose their meaning entirely. A medieval drinking cup could become the center of one of Hollywood’s most elaborate verbal routines. Then, without changing performers, the same man could sing …
Jan 15 2025
Snowflakes swirl through the air as an old storyteller explains that each one is like a tiny white bee serving a queen who lives far to the north. Somewhere beyond the familiar city, past frozen rivers, forests, palaces, and vast stretches of snow, the Snow Queen travels through the winter sky in a glittering sleigh. …
Dec 25 2024
There are only a few hours left before midnight, the decorations are going up, musicians and dancers are rehearsing, and everyone at a Moscow House of Culture is preparing for a lively New Year’s Eve celebration. Then the new director arrives and decides the evening needs improvement. There should be fewer jokes, less dancing, more …
Dec 18 2024
There are fairy-tale movies that try to make magic look realistic, and then there is Jack Frost. Aleksandr Rou’s 1964 Soviet film seems perfectly happy to let magic look like magic. Forest spirits appear among the trees, a witch lives in a wonderfully crooked hut, a boastful young man suddenly acquires the head of a …
Dec 11 2024
Christmas Eve in the village of Dikanka is not going according to plan. A witch flies through the night sky, the Devil steals the moon, villagers stumble around in the darkness, unexpected visitors hide inside sacks, and a lovesick blacksmith is about to embark on an impossible journey to Saint Petersburg in search of a …
Dec 04 2024
Here is a charming little song, “Singing Cat,” an excerpt from Ladislas Starevich’s first animated feature, and often regarded as his finest work, The Tale of the Fox (Le Roman de Renard), which was made with the help of his daughter Irene in 1941. Ladislas Starevich was born in Moscow to Polish parents on August …
Nov 06 2024
Today we have another wonderful Yuri Norstein film, Hedgehog in the Fog. Norstein is best known for this animation, as well as his Tale of Tales. Hedgehog in the Fog was directed by Norstein, written by Sergei Kozlov, with music by Mikhail Meyerovich. It was produced by Soyuzmultfilm in 1975. It is the story of a hedgehog and a bear cub who …
Oct 30 2024
Night on Bald Mountain is a film set to the music of the same name by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, and arranged by his fellow Russian composer, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The film was created by the inventors of pinscreen animation, Alexandre Alexeieff and his collaborator Claire Parker. Alexeieff was born in Kazan, Russia in 1901 and died in …
Oct 23 2024
A frightened seminary student stands alone inside a dark village church. A corpse lies before him. He draws a protective circle around himself and begins to pray, knowing that when night falls the dead young woman may rise from her coffin again. With each passing night, the supernatural attacks grow stranger, the church becomes less …
Oct 16 2024
Last week we had an introduction to the Brumberg Sisters, and this week we have another great film by the duo, featuring one of the scariest characters of folklore, Baba-Yaga. While this fairy tale, and others, portray her as a child-hunting witch, there are some different renditions of Baba-Yaga. In Slavic folklore, Baba-Yaga is typically …
